Top positive review

Yes, I know it is pure hokum, but what great fun. Mysterious lights in the sky, people going missing and then returning somehow altered, Large snail trails across the open desert, eerie soundtrack, good solid acting by B film artists. In other words, a great early 50s Sci Fi shocker. Thank goodness it is available in such a good quality remaster.

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Yes, I know it is pure hokum, but what great fun. Mysterious lights in the sky, people going missing and then returning somehow altered, Large snail trails across the open desert, eerie soundtrack, good solid acting by B film artists. In other words, a great early 50s Sci Fi shocker. Thank goodness it is available in such a good quality remaster.

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This is a review of the 3D blu ray version, which at time of writing has been recently released.

Firstly, it has been given an excellent clean up both of the film quality and sound. The pops and scratches are all gone and this probably makes it cleaner than it's ever been before, but as the film stock originally used wasn't great it still has a lot of grain and some rather murky shadows, but this is most likely the best version you will ever see. The restored stereo sound has been mixed into the front three speakers (left middle right) of a 5.1 set up, giving it a nice suitably deep and highly dynamic feel, and on my system it expands well into full surround via use of my fake surround button. It now has creepy silences with crisp crawling alien noises in your left ear yet has enough bass to please my sub woofer during loud explosions, and although some parts still suffer from hiss and the occasional jarring edit (as certain scenes were added or extended late, some music is cut and repeated) this has all been minimised as much as possible, and the end result is a remarkable improvement without going too mad on the modern mixer effects, this theremin has never sounded so alien!

Now the important part, how does the 3D look?

Well, in my opinion, excellent, it really changes the film and you now realise THIS is how it was meant to be seen! For years I'd heard how, when he looks down that telescope at the crashing 'meteorite', all eyes in the cinema were on that thing in awe as it leaned out over the audience, now finally I can appreciate that for myself at home and it is indeed awesome, and this continues throughout the movie. All those scenes with stuff popping out at the camera, the sparkles, mists, foreground fire and blowing smoke all now look absolutely jaw droppingly THERE, the landslide that covers the ship makes you feel in proper peril, or at least you feel for the actor, and even just the jangling telephone wires as the actors clamber up and down that ladder now fascinate. It's really something, the whole movie is now proper eye popping popcorn spitting fodder and I and my fellow ICFOS fans found ourselves never bored for a second, in fact we enjoyed it so much we cheered at the end.

The only slight negative is whenever added items were superimposed over the background they now seldom fit well into the 3 dimensional space, leading to flat mist over a round crater and laser zaps that look like Disney drew them on the screen later, but these are minor niggles due presumably to limitations of the time, most of the effects stand up surprisingly well and it is still how it was originally shown and meant to be seen, which is what's important.

I highly recommend it, it literally adds a whole new dimension to the film, and what with Creature From The Black Lagoon I sincerely hope we will get more old classics given a similar treatment so we can enjoy them anew, I will certainly be first in the queue. Top marks all round!